Netflix scrubs Kevin Spacey from House of Cards graphics
At this point, it’s clear that Netflix is trying to do everything that it can to remove all things Kevin Spacey from its service.
How far are they willing to go to make this happen? Think in terms of scrubbing the graphics. As a new report from Deadline points out the streaming provider has effectively washed away any graphics of House of Cards featuring Spacey from their home menus, replacing them with images of Robin Wright. Given the recent reports that Netflix has jettisoned Spacey off of the series House of Cards is likely going to become Wright’s show, and the remainder of the sixth and final season will revolve around her character. Personally we have advocated for Netflix to go back and rewrite the first two episodes of the final season to not include Spacey at all, but this is both expensive and incredibly unlikely based on where we are in production at the moment. It would probably also further delay the launch of season 6 from where we are at the moment.
Netflix recognizes that House of Cards is art rather than something meant to mirror the behavior of one of its stars; therefore, they are right to keep the show available for those who want to watch it. Yet, they are also right to feature it in a different way as to not draw immediate attention to the scandal. One of the struggles they will face when the final season premieres is trying to figure out the proper way in which to promote it. If you send the cast out on a promotional tour, odds are that Spacey questions will be fired off in all directions. You will either need to control some of the promotional appearances or figure out a way in which to come up with a unified response and have every person working on the show stick to that. A united front is often the best option we feel.
House of Cards season 6 is still slated to premiere at some point in 2018; it is possible that the brief production shutdown to rework the future of the show could end up delaying the premiere date.
How do you think Netflix should go about promoting the future of House of Cards?